Service trade exports increased by 9% in the first half of the year, and the deficit dropped sharply.

14:58 06-08-2019 reading

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce on the 5th, in the first half of 2019, China's total trade in services reached 2.612 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), an increase of 2.6%. Among them, exports were 933.37 billion yuan, up 9%; imports were 1,679.08 billion yuan, down 0.6%; the deficit was 745.71 billion yuan, down 10.5%.

"Service exports continued to grow faster than imports, and the growth rate was 9.6 percentage points higher than the growth rate of imports. The service trade deficit was reduced by 87.49 billion yuan year-on-year." The head of the Department of Trade and Industry of the Ministry of Commerce said.

The person in charge also said that in the first half of the year, China's service industry achieved rapid growth, and the value-added of service industry increased by 7%, driving service trade to continue to grow steadily. Service trade accounted for 15.1% of total foreign trade, higher than last year. 0.5 percentage points.

It is worth noting that China's knowledge-intensive services are eye-catching. The data shows that in the first half of the year, the import and export of high value-added and high-tech knowledge-intensive services developed rapidly, with an import and export volume of 892.39 billion yuan, an increase of 9.4%, which was higher than the overall growth rate of service import and export by 6.8 percentage points. The proportion of total exports reached 34.2%, an increase of 2.2 percentage points year-on-year.

Among them, the export of knowledge-intensive services was 467.41 billion yuan, an increase of 12.1%; the import was 424.98 billion yuan, an increase of 6.5%. The areas with faster growth are: 33% increase in the export of intellectual property fees; 15.7% in exports of telecommunications, computers and information services, and 19.6% in imports; and other commercial services (including technical, professional and management consulting services, research and development results transfer fees) And commissioned research and development, etc.) exports increased by 10.4%; financial services exports increased by 13.9%, and imports increased by 43.9%.

For the performance of service trade in the first half of the year, Li Jun, director of the Institute of Trade and Services of the Ministry of Commerce, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily that China’s service trade has been rapidly optimized in terms of the quantity and structure of exports. The policy of the service industry is related.

“The service industry has become an important growth pole of the world economy.” Li Jun said that with the widespread adoption of the digital economy, digital technology has developed rapidly, the manufacturing industry and the service industry have been deeply integrated, and the tradability of services has been greatly enhanced. The trend of digitization is becoming more and more obvious, and the development of service trade is facing unprecedented opportunities for development. At the same time, China is also accelerating its transition to a service economy.

For the trend of China's service trade in the second half of the year, Li Jun believes that exports are expected to maintain rapid growth, especially in emerging and knowledge-intensive service areas such as digital technology and consulting services, which will continue to grow substantially. Drive the growth in the number of service trade exports and institutional optimization.

Li Jun also suggested continuing to increase support for trade in services, especially in expanding the mode of opening up and innovation. "In terms of opening up, we can promote the liberalization and facilitation of service trade by deepening the pilot of service trade innovation and development; in the innovative development model, we must accelerate the digitization of service trade and promote the digitalization, intelligence and high-end transformation of service outsourcing. ”